Life
1873-1953; b. Belfast; worked as traveller in ladies’ underwear;
joined Abbey Theatre as an actor; fnd. with Stephen Gwynn and Joseph Maunsel
Hone the publishing company Maunsel, being named after the latter who
invested £2000 and became its chairman; published Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory,
George Russell, James Stephens, Hyde, et al.; involved in a prolonged
wrangle with Joyce over the publication of Dubliners in the so-called
Maunsel Edition (1910), published over five hundred titles, 1905-1923;
received compensation for the destruction of the Maunsel store of - largely
unsellable - books by fire during 1916 Rising; the imprint name changes
to George Roberts in 1917-20, and to Maunsel & Roberts, 1920-23; certainly
concerned in the fiasco of Joyce’s Dubliners (1916); Roberts
printed the illuminated Ireland’s Memorial Record of the Great
War, marginally ill. by Harry Clarke; George Russell [“AE”]
included his verse in New Songs (1904); Maunsel acquired by Robert
West, c.1996.
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Notes
John Cooke, ed, Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909 (Dublin:
Hodges, Figgis 1909), selects gives ‘A Lark in the City’; ‘The
Convent Bell’; ‘Your Question’ [‘You ask me sweetheart
to avow/What charm in you I most adore;/But how can I discriminate/From
your innumerable store.’]; with no bio-details.
James Joyce wrote to his brother Stanislaus, ‘What is wrong
with all these Irish writers – what the blazes are they always snivelling
about? Isn’t it funny to read Roberts’ poems about a mother
pressing a baby to her breasts? O blind, snivelling, nose-dropping, calumniated
Christ wherefore were these young men begotten?’ (Richard Ellmann,
ed., Letters of James Joyce, 1966, Vol. II, p.78; cited in Torchiana,
op. cit. [supra], pp.133-35; and note, Torchiana
cites the above as models for the poetic ambitions of a Little Chandler,
giving added force to Joyce’s derision.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)